Beer With Kyle: Community is EVERYTHING!
Happy Friday Everyone!
We have an interesting discussion today. I want to discuss the community element of Wealthy Affiliate and some changes we've made to the starter membership pertaining to community and our mission moving forward. The community here at Wealthy Affiliate is second to none, and we want to continue building on that with new platforms, technology, and interaction elements.
First, let’s crack open this week’s beer! Today, I’m featuring "Full Tilt" by Phillips Brewing and Malting Company. It’s a lager with an ABV of 5%. Phillips is a popular brewery in Victoria, BC, known for their excellent brews.
Key Takeaways:
- Community Engagement for Starter Members: We’re reintroducing community engagement for starter members. Now, starter members can access the top ten blogs and set up their accounts from within the starter membership. This update gives new members a glimpse into the activity and support available within Wealthy Affiliate.
- Activity Dashboard: Starter members now have an activity dashboard showing success stories, expert classes, blog posts, and a prompt to ask questions to the community. This feature highlights the vibrant and supportive nature of our community.
- Ambassadorship Program: We’re looking to improve the ambassadorship program and want your feedback. We’re considering new metrics for ranking and potential rewards for achieving certain levels, such as monetary gains, swag packages, or word credits.
- Content and Feedback: We want to hear your thoughts on reintegrating the community side and activity features for starter members. Your feedback is crucial in evolving and improving our platform.
Within the starter membership at Wealthy Affiliate, you’ll notice new features. Starter members can now engage with some community activities and see the top ten blogs. They can also set up their accounts and see success stories, expert classes, and blog posts from the community. However, the chat feature remains exclusive to premium members.
We’re also allowing starter members to ask questions to the community, providing them with support and interaction from the beginning of their journey. This reintroduction aims to showcase the active and helpful nature of our community to new members.
For the ambassadorship program, we want to ensure we encourage positive behavior and avoid system gaming. We’re considering various metrics for ranking, such as community contributions, helping others, and creating blog posts. We’d love your feedback on what metrics should be included and potential rewards for high-ranking members.
Lastly, we want your thoughts on reintegrating community and activity features for starter members. We believe it’s essential to introduce new members to the supportive environment here at Wealthy Affiliate.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please share them in the comments below. Enjoy the rest of your Friday, or if it’s Saturday where you are, enjoy your weekend ahead!
Recent Comments
103
Hi Kyle,
My experience with wealthy affiliate so far has been really good, there are so many people that are really helpful and the information the post is very useful, but there are also some people that are definitely gaming the system and just posting constantly just for the sake of it and this is not useful and just clogs up the system. Another example of this is commenting on a question to say that others have provided good answers and not offering anything yourself, this is clearly gaming the system
I think a thumbs down type of vote would be helpful to prevent this, I know it isn't very positive and you don't want to discourage people from contributing but if they knew they could get scored down it might make some people be a little bit more thoughtful about what they post.
Maybe if you only counted content with a certain amount of likes instead so just posting anything didn't skew the system.
Just my thoughts anyway but overall I find the community system really helpful and the response times are sooo fast too
Pete
I am not sure if I remember correctly, but when I first joined as a starter, the chat was open to me.
Having the chat open to the starter package, is crucial in the discovery journey of a newcomer (in my point of view)
What was amazing to me, is that I had no limitations within the WA as a member. The limitation was having my own domain.
It was one decisive fact for me to join as a premium, is that WA does not limit me and I can stay as a starter member all my life if I want to, but my domain will always look like I don't own it.
Knowing that I cannot run a blog with such a domain, and after experiencing the community and interactions and the whole value of WA, I really wanted to join.
I even had access, to 10 valuable classes in the training section, giving me all the information, and I can still run it all on a starter package.
We might say, that I don't represent all segments, and that is correct. I am just sharing my experience and what was key in me joining WA and I am still a member month in and month out and still with zero traffic on my blog.
Yeah, we have waffled a lot about the chat, and we have tried many things over the years. Limited chat, full chat, time sensitive chat, etc.
The thing is, chat becomes diluted with the "make money how" or "buy my junk" sort of comments very quickly, and because there is a free entrance here, we sometimes get people trolling chat just to cause problems.
We eliminate all of that, and keep chat more focus with the community members and those that are investing in their business and building out their business. So I think we are going to keep it to a premium level membership for the foreseeable future.
There are many ways to get help and support, including a direct channel to Carson and myself as a Starter member, through the Questions platform they have access to on their activity dashboard, and directly inline to the training.
Your feedback is great though. There is a fine line between offering too much (that people don't feel they need to upgrade) and offering too little (where they don't want to upgrade). So this is something that we are constantly working towards, no answer is perfect but we aim to work towards the "ideal".
I totally agree with you.. while I was writing the comment, such a fine line was in my head. When I said I don't represent all segments, it was in my head that the issue of offering too much that won't encourage people to upgrade and the reverse scenario..
It is a fine line, that is for sure, and if the chat is being bombarded with spam junk, then this is for sure a factor against allowing starter packages to participate.
I guess I was lucky to enter when the chat was open :)
Thanks a lot Kyle..
Wealthy Affiliate Community is one of the best out there in my opinion.
You've done an exceptional job building it and growing the website to a place of helping so many learn to sustain themselves in a variety of ways.
Keep it up, hug everyone and let your little people know "I'm someone's hero!" and pat yourself on the back.
Thanks for everything,
RitaAnn~
Thanks Rita, appreciate your kind words. We can always do more and get better, and that is why we are constantly reaching out and asking for feedback from you guys.
You are full of great ideas for improvement and innovation, and it excites us to get up every morning to work on WA-side projects working to get better. ;)
Kyle, you've done it again! I completely agree that allowing starter members full access (even temporarily) is the way to go. Giving them a taste of the incredible community and resources we have here at Wealthy Affiliate will showcase the immense value that comes with being part of WA. When people experience the full power of the platform, and decide not to continue, they'll know they are missing out. And if circumstances are such that they can’t be here right now, they will be wishing they could. But they can’t know that without having had the full experience.
I have some thoughts on comments which may be a part of the Ambassador program. I love both the free and paid comment sections, but it does seem like the balance could be adjusted in the paid comments. Earning more credits for giving thoughtful comments would be a great way to encourage engagement and reward members.
Thanks again for always striving to make Wealthy Affiliate the best it can be.
Glad you approve Kundi, we are really happy and actually feel a sense of relief reintroducing this to the platform for Starter members.
We have undergone A LOT of changes since the big hubs release in December, and we are continuing to advance based on feedback, wants and needs, and really useful and powerful insights.
Appreciate all of your feedback here on the comments side of things, I have definitely taken noste.
Thanks, Kyle. You and your team are doing exceptional work at WA, especially with the recent platform changes. The community is truly inspiring. And I'm grateful to be a part of it.
See more comments
Hi Kyle:
This is another interesting session including the WA community, ambassadorship program, and starter members. I'll just comment on the starter membership.
I'm happy that you have reintegrated community and activity features for the starter members. This is a dynamic platform taking the members' best interest into consideration. Decisions are made and reconsidered from time to time, and that's the way you know what works and what doesn't in the moment.
Thank you for caring!
Veron
Yeah, we are happy to reintroduce it. It almost feels like a relief in a sense, it is such a big part of Wealthy Affiliate and we want to provide people with a glimpse into just how awesome the community is here and how much expertise there is here within WA.
Thanks for your feedback Veron, as always it is appreciated. ;)
My pleasure, Kyle!